S.F.'s bike lane expansion rolling along

S.F. TRANSPORTATION

Rachel Gordon

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, May 10, 2012

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

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David of San Francisco walks his dog, Willie, as he rides his bike in a new separated bikeway in Golden Gate Park along John F. Kennedy Drive which separates bicyclists from traffic by a new parking zone for cars on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. less

David of San Francisco walks his dog, Willie, as he rides his bike in a new separated bikeway in Golden Gate Park along John F. Kennedy Drive which separates bicyclists from traffic by a new parking zone for ... more

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

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Howard Faxon of Sonoma parks his car in a new parking zone for cars along John F. Kennedy Drive next to a bike lane which separates bicyclists from traffic on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.

Howard Faxon of Sonoma parks his car in a new parking zone for cars along John F. Kennedy Drive next to a bike lane which separates bicyclists from traffic on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

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A bicyclist rides in a new separated bikeway in Golden Gate Park along John F. Kennedy Drive which separates bicyclists from traffic by a new parking zone for cars on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. less

A bicyclist rides in a new separated bikeway in Golden Gate Park along John F. Kennedy Drive which separates bicyclists from traffic by a new parking zone for cars on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in San Francisco, ... more

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

S.F.'s bike lane expansion rolling along

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Less than two years after the court allowed San Francisco to implement its ambitious bicycle plan, the city has striped more than 20 miles of new bike lanes, added hundreds more bike racks and made it more difficult to drive down Market Street.

But the efforts, which city officials will highlight Thursday as part of the annual Bike to Work Day event, aren't without controversy. A lawsuit prevented the city from implementing bike-improvement projects for four years until it studied the potential impacts. Many of the biking upgrades affect motorists with the loss of curbside parking or traffic lanes, or a combination of the two.

"In the long run, people will see the value for what it is," said San Francisco Transportation Director Ed Reiskin, who is a strong proponent of the city's Transit First Policy intended to get people out of their cars and to take Muni, walk or bike instead.

An estimated 3.5 percent of the commuters in the city pedal to work, up from 2 percent in 2000, according to transportation agency data. City policy calls for hitting the 20 percent mark by 2020.

"There are trade-offs we're going to have to make in the city if we really want to achieve some of the ambitious goals that we've set for ourselves," Reiskin said.

All Chelsea Bahney has to do is step outside her front door to be faced with the trade-offs. There, on the 1200 block of Oak Street in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, a steady stream of cars and trucks whizzed by Wednesday morning along three lanes of traffic heading east on the one-way street. Commuters on bicycle had squeezed between the lane of parked cars and the moving vehicles.

The transportation agency recently unveiled a final design plan to remake her block and two others on Oak Street tucked between Scott and Baker streets to accommodate cyclists. Parking would be eliminated on one side of the block, and a roomy bikeway separated from traffic by landscaping would be created.

One block over on Fell Street, a busy one-way thoroughfare heading west, a similar three-block transformation would occur under the city plan. Together, the east-west arteries carry more than 60,000 vehicles a day, but they also are the flattest and most direct routes for bicyclists traveling between the western neighborhoods and downtown.

'A good idea'

"I think it's a good idea, I totally support it," Bahney said of the Fell-Oak bikeways plan. She and her husband own a car and park on the street, but they also are avid cyclists; it's how her husband gets to work and how she used to before her 3 1/2-month-old son was born. "Even if we might have to look for parking a little further away, it would totally be worth it."

But Filiz Rezvan wasn't so keen. She works in the neighborhood at a photo studio and drives to work; she uses her car regularly during the day for work-related errands. She said Muni is not a reliable alternative.

"Parking is tough around here already," she said.

The proposed Oak-Fell bikeways would eliminate 103 parking spaces on the six affected blocks, but the city would add 57 spaces on adjacent streets.

The proposed separated bikeways project is just one of several that either has been recently completed or that is in the planning stages.

One of the most controversial paths is in the eastern end of Golden Gate Park along John F. Kennedy Drive where parked cars are used to separate bicycles and moving vehicles.

The design has been used in New York City and the Netherlands, but has never been tried in San Francisco. And whether biking, walking or driving, it takes some getting used to.

The bike lane is next to the curb. Vehicles park toward the middle of the street, next to the traffic lanes. A "buffer zone" has been striped on the passenger side of the vehicles between the parking lane and the bike lane to help avoid cyclists from colliding with car doors. Drivers and their passengers have to cross the bike lane to reach the sidewalk.

Onus on passengers

"It's kind of confusing," Marnie Pira said after he parked his car, outfitted with bike racks on the roof, on JFK Drive on Wednesday.

Wes Carroll, riding a recumbent bike with his dog in a carrier trailer in the back, said he credits the city for trying to make cycling safer, but agreed with Pira that it's confusing. Drivers, he said, are getting more used to watching for passing bikers when they get out of their cars. But on the JFK Drive bikeway the onus is now on the passengers. Even with the buffer zone, he said, "a lot of us fear that people will jump out of the cars without looking."

Reiskin, the city's transportation director, said a fair amount of "settle-in time" is to be expected.

"To do some of the bolder infrastructure changes, there are going to be some things that are different than we have now," he said.

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